-The Hindu The crisis-ridden textile sector, being labour-intensive, should have been an ideal candidate for a push as part of the Prime Minister’s pet ‘Make in India’ initiative, but as the issues it is mired in remain unresolved, and with losses mounting, the situation is grim. Nearly half of India’s power looms are at a standstill: the spinning industry in the northern and southern regions has pressed in shutdowns of as...

-The Hindu Gap with Hindu growth rate narrows. India’s Muslim population is growing slower than it had in the previous decades, and its growth rate has slowed more sharply than that of the Hindu population, new Census data show. The decadal Muslim rate of growth is the lowest it has ever been in India’s history, as it is for all religions. The Muslim population still grows at a faster rate than the Hindu...

The Digital India Mission, launched by the NDA government, aims to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats with high speed broadband internet by December, 2016 so that citizens can access online services. However, available facts reveal that this is a difficult task to be accomplished. In rural areas, among the youth aged 14-29 about 82 percent do not know how to operate a computer. In urban areas, nearly 51 percent of youth...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-Economic and Political Weekly The health ministry's move on HPV vaccine feasibility is ill-advised. The union health ministry has asked the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) to examine the feasibility of introducing the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in the country’s universal immunisation programme. The NTAGI has been given three months for this task. The HPV vaccine, which is supposed to protect against cervical cancer in girls and women, is generally...